It stood in the room, waiting. The other technicians had moved back as far as they could go and now stood also, terrified and horrified by the apparition. The monster moved its head and stood, staring balefully at Yatsumoto.
'Help me, Lord... Save me!' he screamed at the Mandarin.
'But you lost, Yatsumoto,' called the Mandarin over the rising crunchcrunchcrunch. 'You lost.'
The monster turned and, implacably, advanced on Yatsumoto, who had nowhere to run. He backed up against a laboratory bench, head pressed back against one of his beloved computers. The monster advanced. The crunchcrunch became unbearable and Yatsumoto thrust his hands over his ears, as if by cutting out the sound he could make the monster go away.
But the monster stopped in front of him and, almost responding in kind, placed one of its giant hands on either side of Yatsumoto's head. With some enormous discharge, a red electric arc leapt between the two hands and Yatsumoto's body glowed red and green like the monster's, then black and white as it went from positive to negative and back again. Then the hands came away and Yatsumoto slumped to the ground heavily, his coat smoking slightly where it touched the ground. The monster stood stockstill and the crunchcrunchcrunch faded away to nothing. The Mandarin came over to look and admire.
'What a marvellous toy,' he breathed.
Peri had been waiting, eyes squeezed almost shut, for what seemed like most of her life. The antennae were pointed squarely at the cell door, as the Doctor had instructed, the umbilical cord of the knitted cable running back to the game machine. The Doctor had told her to 'stand by' half a dozen times, and after each occasion had muttered some variation on the 'hang on a tick' theme, and then rushed to make some adjustment to the electronics. He was behind the machine now, and her confidence in this very Heath Robinson affair was dwindling like sand through her fingers. A triumphant cry from him jerked her eyes open and Kevin, not at all reassuringly, pulled another pillow from the bed over his head.
'Right,' called the Doctor, and evidently switched on, for a heavy humming started from the machine, and seemed to run along the cable and resonate through the antennae Peri was holding, so much so that she nearly dropped it. She was about to call out in distress when, to her and everyone else's astonishment, it worked. The door started to disappear.
The Doctor let out a great 'Yarroo' of success; even Kevin let out an 'and about time too' sort of approbation, which immediately turned to a groan. Peri turned her head to see what Kevin and the Doctor were staring at.
As the door had started to disappear, so had the right-hand cell wall, revealing the claw-waving spider crab. So had the left-hand cell wall, revealing a shimmerin electronic mass of sickly pink, held in a vaguely dog-like shape. So had the back cell wall, revealing a half man, half robot dressed head to foot in black, with only half a human face.
Peri screamed and dropped the antennae, which had no effect on the advancing monsters. Kevin sprang up with a clatter as the table bearing the food tray went over, which had even less effect. The Doctor could only stand, stunned, as the monsters moved towards him...
Chapter Eight
The technicians in the data room were silent now. They knelt on one knee, bowed in homage to their Lord. The Mandarin drank it all in, the glint still in his eye as he surveyed them. The monster stood, motionless, massive, in the centre of the room, next to the deadly video game that had spawned it. In a modest voice belied by his imperial manner, the Mandarin spoke:
'Come now, no need for that, we aren't in the Dark Ages now, not for a while anyway.' He smiled and gestured for them to rise. 'But the time is coming,' he added softly, too softly for any but Stefan to hear. 'The time is coming..
Stefan grinned his wolfish grin.
The three of them were squeezed into a huddle now as the monsters advanced upon them, until the Doctor, recovering from the trance into which his unexpected results in elecronic engineering had sent them, sprang up on the bed to rattle away on the pipe again. The Claw wavered, and then stopped. The man-robot hesitated. The pink cloud melted back to its former position.
'It's all right,' called the Doctor to his companions. 'There's no reason to suppose they want to hurt us.'
Kevin and Peri looked at the Claw, and at the robot — clad, it seemed, half in armour — and at the manic pink cloud, then wondered what particular train of logic lead the Doctor to that conclusion.
The android started to move forward again. 'I say, you sound to me like a sort of sentient thing?'
The rich plummy accent of perfect English spun the Doctor round from an initial appraisal of the door. 'Sort of,' he replied, shortly.
'Oh, good show,' chortled the android. 'Very good show. Getting a bit lonely down here, tell the truth.' In the absence of any response from the Doctor, who tested the door by sticking his finger into the opening, and then pulled it back as he stung it on the invisible barrier again, the android paused for a moment or two, and then spoke again, much louder and much more slowly. 'You know "lonely"?'
'Yes, I know "lonely",' aped the Doctor. 'What d'you think I am, an unfeeling block?' As if to demonstrate the reverse, he continued alternately sucking and shaking his finger until the stinging went-away.
'Eh?' replied the android, uncomprehendingly.
'And I'm not a foreigner,' added the Doctor, crossly. 'You don't have to shout.'
'Oh right, yes, sorry,' shuffled the man-robot, with what would have been a self-conscious grin on his face, if he'd had a proper face.
'Tourists!' muttered the Doctor.
The Mandarin watched idly as the technician's assistants cleared away the debris of the previous game in much the same way as the Caesars must have watched the bestiarii clear up after the lions.
'After tonight,' he relayed to Stefan, 'I think we should move to our centre of production. There really is too much distraction here, and it's possible that we may soon attract the attention of the local militia... America, in any case, will be the best place to watch the Great Game.'
'I will make the necessary arrangements,' muttered Stefan. He half-bowed and made to go, but stopped short as he realised that to skirt round the Mandarin and make for the door would lead him perilously close to the electronic monster.
'Afraid, Stefan?' he taunted mildly. 'You?'
'A man would be foolish to fight that which he cannot kill,' muttered the henchman, darkly, eyeing the monster with a mixture of fear and admiration.
'Very wise, Stefan,' taunted the Mandarin again, pleased at the further demonstration of a lesson well learned. Now to press it home further... He crossed to the electronic monster and, taking care not to touch it, reached up and placed a hand on either side of the monster's head. He closed his eyes, and the ignorant would have assumed he was saying his prayer. Stefan was ignorant... A thin blue spark ran between his hands, passing through the monster's head. In much the same way as the cell door had, but much more quickly, the monster faded away and was gone into nothingness. Stefan's eyes widened to black, staring pools.
'You need be afraid of nothing of which you are the master, Stefan.'
'No, Lord,' replied the henchman, hoarsely, as he bowed his head sharply until his chin touched his chest, and the Mandarin was left in no doubt whatsoever as to who was Master in Stefan's eyes. He positively gleamed with satisfaction.
'Sort of boffin bloke, are you?' asked the android, squinting over the Doctor's shoulder at the antennae he was holding in a markedly disgruntled fashion.
'I'm not a sort of anything,' replied the Doctor irritably, and unfairly, for he had referred to himself as a sort of something ever since he'd had to start explaining his presence almost anywhere he'd visited during several lifetimes tootling around the Universe. 'We haven't been introduced,' he announced, accusingly.
'Oh, so sorry,' replied the android. 'One forgets the courtesies, out here on the frontier.' He stood smartly to attention, eyes staring straight ahead as he barked out, 'SB5496 oblique 74, at your service, sir.'
'SB?' que
ried the Doctor.
'Yes?' queried back the android.
'What does that stand for?'
'Stand for? Curious idea. Doesn't stand for anything. It's my name.' The creature seemed both puzzled, and now worried, as though the Doctor's question had touched some deep and hidden insecurity.
Blithely unaware of the psychological shock waves breaking around him, the Doctor introduced himself. 'I'm the Doctor, and this is Peri, and this is Kevin.' They all shook hands, SB still with some self-consciousness. The Doctor turned towards the Claw. 'And this is, er' he waved his hand vaguely in the air 'this is — well, I can't get my tongue around his name, all glottal stops and consonants, sort of Cockney Welsh, terrible language —'
'Oh, we just call him Mechanic,' explained SB cheerfully.
'Very imaginative,' replied the Doctor, drily.
'Why?' asked Peri in all innocence.
'Turns out he's a Ventusan,' explained the Doctor, wiping hands on a now rather florid and rather grubby handkerchief. 'They fix things. All the time. Everywhere. Anything from a washing machine to a starship engine. They run half the spacefleets in the galaxy, or rather,' he added very pedantically, 'they keep half the spacefleets in the galaxy running.' He looked at SB to appreciate the niceties of the distinction. 'There is a difference, is there not?'
'Oh, they fix things all right,' agreed SB. Which was about as much sagacious wit as the Doctor could look for in that direction. 'Charge the apogee for it, though,' he muttered, darkly.
'Well, what d'you expect?' snapped the Doctor. 'It's the only thing they can do —'
The lesson in macro-economics also seemed to float wistfully, lost and forgotten over SB's head. 'Funny thing, evolution,' he mused, the half metal head threatening to cave in under the stress of the mental effort required to produce the thought.
'A fellow philosopher!' cried the Doctor, his intellectual snobbery rising unbidden to the surface. 'How refreshing! And who's our shimmering friend in the corner?' He gestured at the pink cloud, who had lost his almost-doggy shape now and was more in the way of a three-legged giraffe, engaged in the laborious process, it seemed, of growing a second head.
"Fraid I don't know, old chap,' apologised SB. 'We did meet at a shooting match upstairs — that's my game, really, shooting things,' he confided to the assembly in general, but Peri in particular. 'But the Toymaker fellah, he made some remark about the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin... I'm sure it was angels,' he added, worried again, 'and that thing went into meditation like a shot. Been there ever since. About, oh, seven years now, I suppose.'
The Doctor suddenly remembered. 'You must be part of the pangalactic Second Federation Force for Peace.'
'Third Federation, actually, old chap,' SB explained, again apologetically. 'Bit of a brouhaha with the second... Revolutionaries, fifth column... loyal opposition. Something along those lines, anyway. That's when the fourth front opened up, and that's when the old pins went, too.' He smacked his tin legs cheerfully, and beamed at them all in pride and joy.
'You're a scout, then?' surmised the Doctor.
'Rather. Call ourselves Pathfinders, now.'
'And you had a famous tradition, as I recall...' 'We always get our man, yes, that's it. That's the old Pathfinder tradition. Never lost one yet.'
The Doctor turned to Peri. 'The Scouts are always followed by their base support teams. Anything happens to one of them, the battle group follows up and —'
'Knocks seven colours of ichor out of the opposition,' chortled SB. 'Shoot first, ask questions after. Not that there's ever been anyone to question. Nothing but nuclear waste for parsecs,' he added, obviously very gratified at the thought. 'Good old Pathfinders..
'And poor old Earth,' muttered the Doctor.
'How much of you is - actually... original?' asked Peri, with a delicate hesitancy.
'Left hand,' replied SB, proudly, 'oh, and a bit of my ear,' he added, touching the appendage fondly.
'Our heroic friend here has been engaged in the most futile interplanetary war in modern history for about — a hundred and eighty, hundred and ninety years now?' The Doctor looked to SB for confirmation.
'Had our bicentennial celebrations just before I left,' confided SB. 'Jolly good show, what?'
'But, don't you mind?' asked Peri, pityingly.
'Mind? Sorry, don't follow...'
Peri was about to gesture at what remained of his corpus delicti when the Doctor tried to explain the other fellow's point of view.
'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.'
'No, no, sorry,' returned SB blankly, mouth slackening as he admitted total defeat in following even the slightest thread of the conversation.
'It is a sweet and becoming thing to die for one's country,' translated the Doctor, with distinct distaste.
SB's eyes misted over. 'Oh, I say, that's beautiful. You — you feel that way too, do you? Damn good.'
He looked as though he was about to choke up and embrace the Doctor in a thoroughly manly fashion, but the Doctor had already covered his eyes in exasperation and sat heavily on the bed. He looked at their new companions with something less than enthusiasm.
'A gung-ho robot, a ravenous space plumber and a transcendental pink cloud,' he muttered. 'We're going to make an unbeatable combination...'
'All is prepared, Lord,' announced Stefan, as he entered the data room and crossed to the Mandarin's side. The room had indeed been returned to its former orderly status, and only one or two of the technicians were tending the machines.
'Good,' approved the Mandarin, shortly. He delicately beckoned Stefan a little closer. 'When the final phase is completed tonight, we shall have to reconsider our... employment policy. Those who do not accompany us to America...'
'I beg you, do not concern yourself with details, Lord,' replied Stefan, softly. 'Their contracts of employment will be properly... terminated.'
The Mandarin beamed. 'Excellent, Stefan. I knew I could rely on your... discretion.'
'Always, Lord.' He bowed his head in homage once again.
'Go now,' instructed the Mandarin. 'Anticipation might be half the pleasure, but I have waited long enough. Bring the Doctor to me. We shall play a game, he and I...'
The Doctor continued tapping out his message, nut-crackers in hand, but now using the metal bedstead as his transmitter. The Claw replied with what sounded like hysterical snapping of his mandible, tied in with a couple of bursts on the bedstead when it seemed words failed him.
'It's not as though the Toymaker is short on resources,' said the Doctor, in between sentences. 'He doesn't need to save on building costs, so why does he build a high-tech barrier, when bricks and mortar would do fine?' He waved his hand at the once-existent walls and door to demonstrate his point. The Claw's response seemed to satisfy him, for he handed the antennae over, and watched fascinated as the terrible jaws closed over it as gentle as a summer's breeze. There being no reply to his rhetorical question, the Doctor supplied his own answer. 'Because that's what he knows, and that's what he controls the easiest.'
'You said he was telepathic,' pointed out Peri.
'Yeah, and summat else,' added Kevin, somewhat unhelpfully.
'Telekinetic,' supplied Peri.
'Yeah,' added Kevin, none the wiser.
'That's right,' encouraged the Doctor.
'So the barrier was made up from his mind?' speculated Peri.
The Doctor nodded at the seemingly empty doorway. 'I'm sure it is. But the inconvenience of having to sustain the mental effort bored him. He made it a simple electro-mechanical device which he could switch on and off with a flick of his mind.'
'If he's telepathic,' mused Kevin, reaching a conclusion with the speed of a glacier, 'he can hear everything we're thinking..
'Only if he's listening all the time,' insisted the Doctor. 'Think of it yourself,' he invited, ever the optimist. 'If you could receive every thought of every person within say, what — five miles? You'd go mad. You'd have to disciplin
e your mind absolutely to filter out the thoughts you don't want to hear. And you'd have to be able to turn them off altogether if you wanted to do some thinking yourself. I'm gambling that the Toymaker's "Great Work" is of much more interest to him than anything we might be chatting about down here.' He looked around him. 'Particularly what we have been chatting about down here... Now I've been talking it over with my friend the Mechanic here, and he thinks it'll work. He'll need a hand, though. Rather literally, I'm afraid,' he added, looking at SB, who looked as cheerful and as mystified as ever. A voice stopped the conversation in its tracks.
'Doctor...'
The Doctor spun round to see Stefan standing in the doorway, his grin never more wolfish. 'Ah, ready to come out and play, are we?' he called, drily. He rose, dusted his trousers off and paused to fix Peri with the hardest stare he could muster.
'When you want me, just give me a yell, will you?' He continued to fix her with that stare as he repeated, 'Just give me a yell.'
Peri nodded, understandably bemused, and the Doctor, with a half cheery wave, turned and went through the door, obviously with the barrier lowered for that purpose. And obviously only for that purpose, for when Kevin started to follow him, he ran smack into it and was hurled back several feet.
The Doctor walked off down the corridor and, stopping only to stare at Peri, Stefan walked slowly after him.
The corridors and the entire complex seemed strangely silent to the Doctor as he walked along. Or maybe it was his sense of gloom and doom which he'd fought hard to disguise from the others in the eventually overcrowded prison cell. Given the state they were in, he thought, maybe the pink cloud had the right idea. It suddenly struck him that the last time he'd looked at the pink cloud, it could easily have been mistaken for an ostrich rather than a three-legged beastie, given that it had only two legs and its head was stuck in the sand...
'I understand you play backgammon,' he threw at.Stefan.
'A little,' was the short reply.
DOCTOR WHO - THE NIGHTMARE FAIR Page 10
